Dead Zone Diet: Why Fertilizers Are Taking Fish off the Menu

via AlterNet:



Dead Zone Diet: Why Fertilizers Are Taking Fish off the Menu

By Kerry Trueman, Huffington Post. Posted August 18, 2008.

Fertilizer runoff from industrial agriculture and fossil-fuel use are causing catastrophic "dead zones" in our oceans.



Steak or salmon? Millions of menu-mulling diners ask themselves this question every day. Enjoy your dithering while you can, folks, because the day is coming when you may not have the luxury of choosing the lobster over the London broil. For those with a more populist palate, I've got some bad news, too; a future with no more fried clam strips or canned tuna for you.

Why? Because fertilizer runoff from industrial agriculture and fossil-fuel use are causing catastrophic "dead zones" in our oceans, "killing large swaths of sea life and causing hundreds of millions of dollars in damage," according to Scientific American.



This fertilizer runoff, instead of contributing to more corn or wheat, feeds massive algae blooms in the coastal oceans. This algae, in turn, dies and sinks to the bottom where it is consumed by microbes, which consume oxygen in the process. More algae means more oxygen-burning, and thereby less oxygen in the water, resulting in a massive flight by those fish, crustaceans and other ocean-dwellers able to relocate as well as the mass death of immobile creatures, such as clams or other bottom-dwellers. And that's when the microbes that thrive in oxygen-free environments take over, forming vast bacterial mats that produce hydrogen sulfide, a toxic gas.
How fitting! More toxic gas from the same chemical companies who gave the world Agent Orange. Except that in this case, it's an unwelcome by-product. Oops! Sorry 'bout that! ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/water/95458/dead_zone_diet%3A_why_fertilizers_are_taking_fish_off_the_menu/

An occasion to bitch about agribusiness. My opinion is that a world of 6.5 billion people cannot consume grain fed meat and expect the natural systems that support our food system to sustain themselves.

It has gotten to the point where mankind is going to have to take active steps to care for the health of the ocean. Up until now, humans have been a minor drain on the ocean's resources, harvesting a few fish and some algae here and there. In the future though, mankind will have to monitor the balance of the ocean's chemistry to keep it alive and productive.

As well as sequester the CO2 in the atmosphere to bring it down from the 500, 600, 700 ppm that it is creeping up towards, man will have to add O2 to the oceans to keep them from being choked off and lifeless. A large windmill stuck out in the middle of a coastal current would be able to aerate large volumes of water, pumping air down a hundred feet and diffusing it into the current. Unfortunately, that project is a pure expense with no immediate benefits, only fish that can be harvested years later. But it is something the government could do now to ensure the viability of coastal areas with high Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD) caused by human activities.